BBVA execute cross border payment with blockchain

The second largest bank in Spain, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has announced the successful completion of its first cross-border payment using blockchain technology from Ripple.

The bank said it has transferred 50 payments in Euros from Spain to Mexico, with the transaction taking only a few seconds, which would normally “take days”.

“It’s not just the real-time transfer that’s important here but the information we can send with the payment,” said Alicia Pertusa, head of the bank’s Digital Transformation in Investment Banking unit.

“That’s very relevant for our clients because they could begin streamlining their reconciliation systems.”

The information captured alongside a transaction can be critical in B2B payments, especially for companies that need to reconcile payments made on outstanding invoices, for instance.

BBVA will begin testing these real-time payment capabilities, which use Ripple’s distributed ledger technology, with a small group of corporate customers in the coming weeks, according to Pertusa.